On Long Winter Nights… - Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870–1900

The reader is given an intimate memoir of Jewish adolescence and life from a young woman's perspective in an Eastern European shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century. Hinde Bergner, future mother of one of Yiddish literature's greatest poets and grandmother of one of Israel's leading painters, recalls the gradual impact of modernization on a traditional world as she finds herself caught between her thirst for a European education and true love, and the expectations of her traditional family. Written during the late 1930s as a series of episodes mailed to her children, and never completed due to Bergner's murder at the hand of the Nazis, the memoir provides details about her teachers and matchmakers, domestic religion and customs, and the colorful characters that peopled a Jewish world that is no more. Translated from the Yiddish and with a critical introduction by Justin Cammy, it is a lively addition to the library of Jewish women's memoir, and should be of interest to students of Eastern European Jewish culture and women's studies.

About the author

Summary

In this intimate memoir of a young Jewish woman’s adolescence and life in a nineteenth century Eastern European shtetl, Hinde Bergner recalls the gradual impact of modernization on a traditional world as she finds herself caught between her thirst for a European education, true love, and the expectations of her traditional family.

Product details

• Authors: Hinde Bergner, Justin Daniel Cammy
• Assisted by: Justin Daniel Cammy (Editor), Justin Daniel Cammy (Translation)
• Publisher: Harvard Center for Jewish Studies
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.09.2005
• EAN: 9780674019706
• ISBN: 978-0-674-01970-6
• Dimensions: 159 mm x 237 mm x 12 mm
• Weight: 224 g
• Illustrations: 6 halftones, 4 line drawings
• Series: Harvard Center for Jewish Stud
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous